


Out of the Office

by StarCola



Category: No Fandom, Original Work
Genre: Original Character(s), Original Fiction, Sci-Fi, Work From Home
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-27
Updated: 2020-04-27
Packaged: 2021-02-23 09:56:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23876299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarCola/pseuds/StarCola
Summary: Sci-fi work from home drabble while I'm stuck in meetings that last for-ev-er.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	Out of the Office

Black coffee. Hot, black coffee. A cardinal sin in Rian's book. She brought her over-sized mug to her lips and drank deeply anyway.

"That good, huh?" The shimmering blue face on her desk watched Rian's features contort in disgust, visibly trying not to smirk.

"Like motor oil."

"I suppose you would know."

"Oh, hi, Glenna, I didn't know HR would be present for this morning's meeting."

The image shivered for a moment as the call refreshed. After a moment of dead air, the face returned.

"Jackass."

Too sleepy to laugh, Rian settled for a smile. "You probably deserved that, though."

"Probably."

Since the shutdown of Redco's main office due to the bio-threat being leveled on the city, Rian had made a point to get up fifteen minutes earlier than her telecommute had required to chat with Vel, the only other person in the Sales department remotely in her age range. Despite the seniority Vel had on her with Redco, they'd become friends within weeks of Rian joining the team. As such, Vel was the only person who got away with making cracks about the... dammit, what was HR calling it these days... "the non-carbon nature of an aspect or aspects of a carbon-based life-form." Which was a lot of words to say "cyborg." Not to mention all of the people in the company with "normal" prosthetics that this suddenly applied to.

"I'm trying to drop a few pounds." Rian took another sip from her mug and grimaced. "The amount of sugar and fat there is in flavored creamer is--"

"Astronomical," Vel finished, rolling their eyes. "You do this like, once every six months. I know the spiel."

"Okay, but this time I'm serious. The Quarantine Fifteen is real, and I'm living proof. I'm just glad they're using our old models for the meetings. One of my college friends, over at Hemmingwood? Says they shipped all of their employees self-scanning kits to keep the in-meeting models updated week-to-week."

"Um, what the fuck? That feels like a major violation of privacy."

"Apparently Hemmingwood played it off as like, 'well if you were coming into the office we'd see anyway' kind of thing."

"Bullshit!" Vel's image shivered, went sideways, and then cut off completely. "Oh, dammit. Hold on..."

"Bump the terminal?" Rian took the moment of distraction to chug half of her coffee; the last thing she wanted was to be pulling faces all the way through the meeting as she nursed the disgustingly bitter stuff.

"Hit the desk, terminal came unplugged." Vel's face flickered back into view. "There. Can you see me?"

She debated lying just to watch Vel curse and fuss with the terminal, but decided against it. "Beautiful as always."

"Naturally. Where was I?"

"Self-scanning kits."

"Self-scanning kits! Jesus Christ. As far as I know, there are no self-scanners on the market that don't at least _store_ bio-data, and most of them _transmit_ it!" Vel's face began to turn from blue, to purple, to bright pink. "Which breaks, like, half a dozen labor and privacy laws I can think of off the top of my head."

"Vel."

"And of course they're probably loophole-ing it like, 'oh, well, its not mandatory, it's voluntary,' but there's probably a lot of pressure from--"

"Vel."

"--managers and higher-ups to do so, with thinly-veiled--"

_"Vel."_

"Yes, sorry."

"We're two minutes away from the meeting, and you're a lovely shade of Barbie right now."

Vel pursed their lips and looked at their feed. "Oh, goddammit. Hold please." They took a deep breath, and Rian watched as their color slowly crept towards flesh-pink instead of eyeburning-pink.

"You're not telling me anything I don't know," Rian continued. "We go to the same third-party scan site whenever Redco wants to update our models."

"I know." Vel's eyes had a far-away look, their attention no longer on the conversation. Their facial features slowly started to shift themselves toward a more human-like arrangement. Rian downed the last gulp and a half of her drink, suppressing a shiver. Despite how often she'd seen it lately, she always felt like she was intruding on something personal when Vel meditated on their form. Like watching someone get dressed. She was happy they felt comfortable enough with her to meet them with their resting, neutral blue form, but the fact that they didn't turn their feed off while they shifted for meetings just felt weirdly intimate.

A notification pinged at the edge of Rian's vision, prompting her to join the meeting room.

"See you in there?"

"Wait for me." Vel's lips hardly moved as she spoke. "Almost done." Rian tried not to stare as Vel put the finishing touches on their appearance - a strong but well-kept goatee grew into place, eyeliner so fanciful that most wouldn't even use it for nights out bled onto their skin. In what almost seemed to be an afterthought, a dusting of freckles peppered their nose and cheeks.

"Bert is gonna have words about the makeup," Rian tried to keep her tone light.

"Fuck him. Ready?"

They both motioned upwards to their right temple, and Vel flickered out of view, being replaced by a large meeting table.

The table stretched forward for about a foot before hitting the wall of Rian's bedroom. Undeterred, the holograph bent and climbed up the wall, leaving several participants sitting at a ninety-degree angle to the floor. Redco had promised these meetings would make the work-from-home experience "practically indistinguishable from the office environment." But whoever wrote that release clearly already had a room big enough to fit an entire meeting table. One by one, chairs populated with other employees; a head and shoulders view projected onto a (now outdated) model of their body.

"Good morning everyone," Bert, the head of their division, did a silent headcount as he started the meeting. "Happy end of quarter. Let's put in our best efforts to-- Veloreith, once again--"

"Apologies, Bert," Vel cut him off. "Something's throwing my bios out of whack." A very scientific term for 'I look how I want, you can't prove I'm lying, fuck you.' Rian swallowed a laugh. If Bert had anything to say on the matter he kept it to himself.

"I assume you all saw this morning's email about our latest influx of customers. Patrice, if you wouldn't mind going over that information? ...Patrice, I think you're muted. Patrice--"


End file.
